Common Sense: Tyranny (1776)

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Common Sense: Tyranny (1776)

According to some historians, Thomas Paine’s, Common Sense, was the most influential pamphlet in American history.Widely popular, it sold over 120,000 copies in the first three months of publication and 500,000 copies by the end of the Revolution.

“… Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families…Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new World hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still…

No man was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April 1775 [Lexington], but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever; and disdain the wretch, that with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE, can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul…

A government of our own is our natural right: And when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.”Thomas Paine, Common Sense, January 10, 1776

“Men, who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent. Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs… from the world at large…” Thomas Paine, Common Sense, January 10, 1776